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Sunday, May 31, 2015

Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater

Mr. Popper paints houses.
He’s never left the town of Stillwater, even though he would desperately
love to see the arctic polar regions.
One day, Mr. Popper is surprised to receive an unexpected gift from an Admiral
on an arctic expedition. It turns out to
be a penguin, and the Popper children treat him as a new member of the
family. After a while their houseguest
begins to get lonely, at least until a local zoo sends the Poppers a female
penguin for company. Before long, the
Popper household is filled with baby penguins!

As cool as it might sound to have exotic animals for pets,
you have to be careful what you wish for!
I loved reading about how much changed in the Popper household once the
penguins began to settle in. The birds
lived in the refrigerator during the summer, so Mr. Popper had to have air
holes punched in the door! During the
winter months he would just leave the windows open, but the rest of the family
had to wear their winter coats inside!
Eventually, feeding this flock became so expensive that Mr. Popper had
to earn money by turning the birds into trained performers!

I’ve heard stories about people who keep exotic animals as
pets, like pythons or even tigers, but these stories never seem to have a happy
ending. Even though Mr. Popper was a very
attentive pet owner, he still felt as if his penguins would feel more at home
in the wild. But what do you think? Should people be allowed to keep exotic
animals as pets? Would these animals be
happier in a zoo, or even left alone in their natural habitat?